I want a fanfic about the members of the Black Guard and their conversations with each other. Imagine working in the fiercest army. You routinely brutally torture people for information. You go to war. Everyone fears you and what you represent. Every now and again you need to heavily guard a shop of sweets so your boss can buy candy for his crush. That must be such a strange experience. Are they cool with it? Do they think it makes them look weaker? Did they have a betting pool when General Ling would finally confess? What's the tea in that group I need to know.

@kdramaspace + @userdramas YEAR IN REVIEW 2022 | Best Picture

love like the galaxy (dir. fei zhen xiang)

i love this trend of emperors getting overly invested in shipping wars vs. palace politics

@userdramas event 13: team spirit ↳ Cheng Shaoshang's Harem Team

Fangs of Fortune 大梦归离 – First trailer Dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan

I’ve seen more than one person refuse to watch Lost You Forever because Xiaoyao isn’t going to end up with Xiang Liu, who they think looks really appealing, and honestly their loss. He’s a good character, but all the leads are interesting characters and there’s so much more to the show than ‘who will she choose.’

He’s literally not ‘another Runryu’ because he isn’t forced into an antagonist role?? He’s just a tragic character. And Cang Xuan and Tushan Jing and Xiaoyao are all really complex characters as well.

The show is about coping with trauma for all the main cast, so no, it’s not a fairytale and no she doesn’t choose the ‘changed for the better’ bad boy, but she also doesn’t choose the male lead.

She chooses the one that makes her feel safest, most secure, and most loved, and I actually find that compelling in its ordinariness in a series like this.

The fact that the main male/female relationship in this series doesn’t turn romantic should clue people in to the need to not go into it with a normal xianxia mindset. It’s essentially a character study over everything else.

Anyway watch Lost You Forever.

(To be clear when I say it’s ‘not a fairytale’, it’s not meant as a dig at them. I always describe LBFAD as a fairytale, and it’s my fave xianxia. I’m just describing the extremely different approach Lost You Forever has.)

One of the things I find so interesting is how Jing is so very much not what a FL’s endgame love interest, especially in an epic xianxia, looks like (I mean in terms of character and narrative, not physical looks. Deng Wei is a ridiculously handsome man, like the rest of XY’s choices.)

I wonder if that is where at least some of puzzlement over XY’s choice/dislike of Jing as endgame that I’ve seen come from.

Jing is NOT the male lead - that is Cang Xuan, XY’s cousin who she never has even a glimmer of romantic feeling or attraction to. But Jing is also not the biggest badass or most magically powerful or most ambitious or with most status or most grand gestures or most epic story or even most outsize interaction with FL (vampy took her on dates to freaking underwater with his magic while Jing got her a practical gadget to use to go underwater herself; Vampy gave up one of his nine lives to heal her; Jing was only able to preserve her body so it would not be beyond saving and also try to die himself. Vampy’s power is battle while Jing is a tracker. Jing’s love is all-consuming and devoted but it’s also quiet.)

Jing does not come out first in anything except possibly torture (tho honestly that’s a bit of an open season on that one) and abnegation for FL’s sake. I mean the three guys are (future) emperor, a legendary rebel general with nine lives and an insane amount of magic and a…wealthy merchant.

And in a lot of ways it goes against the accepted usual narrative. Of course the top alpha dog would get the FL - the biggest bestest dude!!!! There are not many dramas where FL ends up not with ML and the ones I can think of still have a guy with outsize power/not that quiet/unhinged charisma - think of Ji Chang Wook in Empress Ki for example. The closest I can think of is in The King Loves also based on a novel where FL did not end up with the royal ML but the SML, the quiet royal bodyguard (but even there Rin was the best fighter in the drama.)

And of course the other thing that reinforces this whole departure from the usual narrative and can drive frustration is if you look at the three arcs/obstacles to FL for the three men. Cang Xuan is freaking fighting and scheming to win an empire! And accepting the whole drama maxim “love is never fated for an emperor.” Vampy is literally a sworn enemy of XY’s brother and fights to restore the long-defunct kingdom. So we have a would be emperor and a rebel leader. And then Jing’s problem is getting out of his engagement to an awful woman to be free to marry XY and/or leaving his monster family and abandoning his name to follow XY. I can see someone going “that’s nothing!”

BUT!

I love the narrative for getting that to a person living it, it’s all-consuming but also sticking to its guns that who XY will end up with is not about the usual tropes but what makes sense for her as a character. And so there is a reason Cang Xuan is the ML but Jing is the endgame and she does not end up with Vampy either. Cang Xuan’s wishes and plans drive the plot but that is precisely both why Jing is secondary in the plot but the one XY picks - she wants someone who will not drive the plot because what she wants is someone she wants cottagecore life with and there is no plot in cottagecore. The very fact that all Jing yearns for and all he fights for is domestic bliss (a traditionally FL obsession) - even all his scheming to help CX ascend is because he wants to assist FL’s desires - is why she ends up with him.

As she pretty much point blank stated in 33, everyone in her life put her second to a great cause and she’s done with that. The girl does not want a man who will change the world, she wants someone who is content to live in it with her.

ETA: I keep saying it but what the audience would pick in her place remains irrelevant. I mean I would not pick any of the three myself - I don’t feel like eternally sharing my man with 100 women as anyone with Cang Xuan would have to, Vampy’s greatest desire is to perish in the fight and the lack of appeal of that as a dating quality is obvious, and with his fam, marrying Jing would be like marrying into the Manson Family. But I am not XY so here we are.

Xiao Yao appreciation 01/∞

Xiao Yao appreciation 01/∞

This is so beautiful it hurts.

Just let this man be a doting househusband already.

actually squealing at the scene where ye shiqi offers her his water and food by the river and she's all "you're so capable... lucky for the girl who's going to marry you in the future" and he glances over at her and smiles all shyly HELPPPP

Lost You Forever 长相思 (2023) | Ep. 3

[Translation] No more shipwars, fans agree that Xiaoyao should just have a harem

/**SPOILER WARNING FOR SEASON TWO/**

Just for laughs, I translated the funniest comments from a fan-made commentary video.

"Spare tire" is a slang and insult, in this context it refers to the guy (usually second male lead) that gives/sacrifices/contributes a lot in his pursuit of the female lead, but doesn't win her romantically in the end

[SPOILER WARNING] Based on the ending of the novel (that this drama is adapted from) Jing is 100% undoubtedly the male lead, and Xiang Liu is actually the spare tire. But the fan's argument had a solid landing because Jing's personality and behavior is like that of a spare tire (especially given all the L's he's taken from his family); whereas Xiang Liu's personality is bossy, domineering and self-assured

Lol just realized I used wife and husband interchangeably in my translation. The meaning still holds though

In traditional Chinese harems, the first wife should be "generous" knowing that their partner will likely have more wives in the future. If they're not able to be even a little bit generous, and cannot tolerate having other bitches around, then they're just fucking with themselves and absolutely wouldn't survive the long eternity that is their marriage. Hence the votes for Jing

(This is what Xiaoyao was explaning to Ah Nian — she would have to come to terms with this if she wants to marry Cang Xuan)

In a harem, even though the first wife/husband should be generous, they usually... aren't. They can't stop their partner from marrying more, so usually they just unhappily take the L and be insufferable every way that they can. So as first wives are notoriously temperamental, hence Xiangliu's nominations

@userdramas​ get to know me bingo: tropes @asiandramanet creator bingo — blorbo — tushan jing + goodness tropes | lost you forever (2023)

Dai Luwa as A Nian

watching lyf rn and cang xuan may just be the best cdrama gege of the century